Rolled pulp strips can be readily disintegrated into fluff by hammer mills or pin drums, as shown, for example, in Joa U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,016,582 and 3,268,954. The disintegrated fluff is then formed into a relatively thick batt used in the fabrication of disposable pads, such as sanitary napkins, hospital pads, diapers, etc. on apparatus shown, for example, in Joa U.S. Pat. No. 3,086,253. The technique utilized by the patents just mentioned utilizes a supply of pulp in the form of compacted wood pulp sheets, usually in roll form so that only a single or a very few layers of sheet pulp are presented endwise to the disintegrating mechanism.
Where compacted wood pulp sheets are supplied in the form of bales in which the sheets are stacked one on top of the other, they are hard to separate into sheet form, because the sheets tend to stick together. Accordingly, it has proven very difficult to commercially disintegrate the baled compacted pulp sheets into fluff. U.S. Pat. No. 3,692,246 of Sept. 19, 1972, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,804,340 of Apr. 16, 1974, illustrate examples of suggested techniques for dealing with stacked sheets or bales of compacted wood pulp. In both of these patents multiple stages of disintegration are necessary. The first stage breaks the bale down into chips and the second stage reduces the chips to fluff. The necessity for multiple stages increases the cost of the apparatus. Moreover, the first stage shredder acts on the edge of the bale or stack, this being a relatively tough part of the bale as the sheets are laminated together and the edge of one sheet reinforces the next.